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Craft Beer Review: Petrus Aged Pale Ale

Petrus Aged Pale Ale: Brewed in Belguim by Bavik-De Brabandere, this wild sour ale comes in at a strength of 7.3% alcohol, is aged in oak barrels for 20 months and somewhat deceivingly is not identified as a sour beer on the bottle so I can see at least a few people being in for a surprise with this one. I can’t see a bottle date on mine, however it was at least 1 year past it’s best before date so it could have been aged for 2-5 years for all I know.

Aroma and Appearance: It pours a hazy golden colour, a bit of foam and lots of bubbles climbing up the sides of the glass. The aroma is champagne like with oak, grass and sour lemon.

Flavour: It starts off much like a dry white wine, lots of oak and then you get hit with musty grapes, lemon, sour fruit and tart on the finish.

Overall Impression: I do like sour beers a lot, but I sometimes find them hard to drink in large amounts so I really enjoyed having a 12oz bottle of this versus a 22oz one. One of my biggest complaints about places like Jolly Pumpkin is they charge a lot (worth it), but only offer large bottles of their sour beer so I rarely buy them. This one is great in that it’s not so sour that you stop liking it, rather it is well balanced but has a good kick too.

Rating: I give it a 8/10 as in excellent, really good balanced sour beer.